It is reported that John Paul may be declared Venerable as soon as December.
Recently in Papal Category
The pope has had a webcam installed at his summer residence so people can see him taking a stroll. No indication of how long you have to wait for this or what the chances are of catching him. The location is www.vaticanstate.va.
The pope has been big on embracing technology (YouTube, Facebook, etc.). For someone who likes to write his encyclicals in longhand, I hope these are things that express genuine interest and are not publicity stunts foisted on him, but somehow I have my doubts. You know, when people who are not hip try to act hip in order to impress younger people?
I realize the encyclical is old news but I just ran across this article. Here is George Weigel's take on the new papal encyclical. He calls it a "duck-billed platypus", with clearly demarcatable sentences written by Benedict and those written by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace with a decidedly more liberal slant. And here is Jimmy Akin's critique of George Weigel's critique of the encyclical. He mostly agrees with him but not entirely; he doesn't buy that the PCPJ texts don't reflect Benedict's thought. Akin also relates his first impressions of the encyclical.
I'll repeat my usual complaint about encyclicals: Why can't these things be clear, lucid, and readable to ordinary people (in other words, at the risk of not being perspicacious, perspicacious)? Why do they always have to be impenetrable and abstruse? Both Weigel and Akin comment on how hard-to-read this encyclical is.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is actually Catholic (an obvious rarity in among Japanese), visited the Holy See recently and bestowed a Sony HDR-XR500V HandyCam on the pope. I am picturing the pope making videos with this ...
The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, William Cardinal Levada (an American), is now, with the retirement of the previous prelate, head of the Ecclesia Dei commission responsible for the reconciliation of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The SSPX caused an uproar earlier this year owing to its holocaust-denying bishop.
I think it is interesting, and a good sign, that Levada is being entrusted with this additional task. It shows the pope thinks he has done well. To have such a high-placed American in the Curia is just awesome.
This move had been announced in March. Secular media are spinning this as a sacking of the previous head, but it was the normal time for retirement, and he was thanked by the pope for his service, and the ZENIT article mentions nothing negative, so it may merely be reflective of the media's know-nothingism.
